5/15/2007 @ 3:59PM

Razr Redux

For years,
Motorola
has tried without success to follow up its iconic Razr with another hit phone. Today, Chief Executive
Ed
Zander
Ed Zander
showed off his company’s latest attempt: another Razr.

The Razr2 heads a lineup of slim, feature-filled phones that Zander hopes will become hits and bring the handset company back to profitability. The original Razr kick-started the fashion-phone trend, but its falling price tag–from $500 three years ago to $50 or less today–has burned Motorola’sbottom line. The company tried to follow with a roster of thin fashion phones ranging from the Pebl to the Krzr. But none has achieved the popularity of the Razr, which Zander said Tuesday is approaching 100 million units sold worldwide.

Razr2 seeks to solve that problem. It’s thinner than its predecessor, yet feels more substantial, and software and user-interface upgrades will make it easier to use than the original, which looked good but didn’t work that well.

And like most new phones, it supports multimedia features like music and video playback, even though few consumers are using those features. In March, just 1.3% of U.S. wireless subscribers watched videos on their phone, according to research firm M:Metrics. But carriers like
AT&T
,
Sprint Nextel
and Verizon Wireless need to boost sales by selling data services, so Motorola needs to create a phone that makes them happy.

Is that enough to keep consumers happy? More important, is that enough to get consumers to upgrade from their existing Razrs to a more expensive model, which will likely cost between $200 and $300? We’ll see when the Razr2 goes on sale this summer.

But we already know that the Razr2 won’t distract consumers who are bent on getting their hands on Apple‘s
forthcoming iPhone, a $500 gadget that combines a touch-screen smart phone with Apple’s iPod music and video player. Zander isn’t trying to compete with that phone, due out next month.

Instead, on Tuesday the company showed off an unremarkable music phone–the Rokr Z6–that will compete mostly with midrange music phones from Samsung,
Nokia
and Sony Ericsson. Zander also re-teased his self-proclaimed “media monster” Z8 kick-slider, which was first unveiled in February. He also showed off an upgraded version of the company’s QWERTY smart phone, Q9, which will be available in Italy next week and elsewhere in the next few months.